Arpeggio of Blue Steel – Ars Nova episode 10 – 11: Ars Nova

Well, Arpeggio of Blue Steel is doing something I was not prepared for. By the way it is now heading with its story it is actually starting to be a much better show than I would have originally expected. If things continue to be this tense for the next 2 episodes it might have regained much of my hope for the show and I would be willing to improve my review of it when the time comes. This unexpected turn made the show much more serious than it was before, and while it is true that with simply nanomaterial it is possible to recover everything that was lost, even Kougou sudden realization of her own insanity was an interesting enough twist to make me love the show even more.

I must admit that I’m not that much in love with the double-sacrifice theme of the episode, but it was well done and so I really can’t say anything bad about it, but when it comes to Kougou’s situation…how she realizes that she was manipulated all this time and that everything she used as a basis for our sanity turned out to be fake, that was just perfect. It is rare that I see a time in anime where they can really portrait craziness the right way. For me the psychology of the character is much more interesting than the actions that comes with it and that little 5 minutes scene alone get me so much more faith into the show than I should have. I’m looking forward to next episode a lot.

Episode 11

Well damn, I didn’t care much about Iona’s sister dying and how sad she was because of it, but this episode had a whole lot of awesome element in it. First of all the episode begin with a tactical maneuver that would give a medal to any officer, Gunzou managed to destroy a whole array of ships in a single blow and it was both intellectually and visually impressive to say the least. The combat against the two submarine was quite fun to watch too, but I must say that by far my highlight for this episode is once again all about Kongou. She is really stealing the show to me and she is becoming my favorite character really quickly.

Kongou managed to break her chains, fuse with a surveillance AI and create what I must call the coolest looking ship design I’ve seen in a while. Usually I expect people to keep some regular pattern in their design, I could have seen a flying ship, but I didn’t expect it to take the shape that it currently as, one huge floating sphere coming to wreck them all. Last episode is the final of Arpeggio and it will be one hell of a battle, I feel that unless Kongou suddenly sides with Gunzou there is no way for them to win, the American fleet seems much scarier than anything the Japanese fleet sent at them until now. Gunzou better get really lovable really quickly because otherwise his ass will be really cold at the bottom of the Ocean.